Credit nostalgia, but one of the most popular booths at this year's E3 floor yet again was stocked with gaming devices decades old, some which you may yourself have owned and cherished during your childhood. With several long tables of gaming systems from the 1970's and into the golden years of the late 80's-early 90's, many which were playable, plenty of E3 attendees were seen grinning ear to ear, reminded of the joys (and challenges) of their younger years trying to level up against sprite illustrated opponents...

The titles at the Videogame History Museum were in stark contrast to the ultra-realistic games surrounding the selection of early 8-bit and 16-bit systems, yet the booth's offerings seemed popular across all age ranges. The booth even included a dozen or so stand-up arcade machines, reminding me of the days when a quarter on the screen meant, "you got next".

And as someone who owned a Super Famicom, NEC TurboGrafx, Sega Dreamcast, and a few of those Tomy and Mattel handheld electronics games (the pre-cursor to the Gameboy), it wasn't a big surprise many of the older attendees were drawn right into the booth to saddle up to a game of 'Nam 1975, Metal Slug, River Raid, or Vectrex Mine Storm. They were fun then and they're still fun today...if you can tap back into your imagination of youth, when a few pixels could be envisioned as a dragon, spaceship, or race car. The Museum turned out to be a great appetizer before sinking deep into the latest next-gen titles, if just to see the amazing packaging of the era.

The Videogame History Museum finished a successful round of Kickstarter funding and is currently seeking a real estate donation to help house and display the physical collection of 20,000 historical video game items spanning over 25 years, "ranging from games, hardware, memorabilia and prototypes to a vast digital archive containing magazines, design and developer notes, company press kits, back-ups of unreleased games and much more. "

To learn more about the Videogame History Museum and get involved helping preserve the history of gaming, check out vghmuseum.org